Requiescat In Pace
by Syaoran no Miko
Summary: Tsuzuki introspection shortfic, at the last bit of the Kyoto arc.


(Standard disclaimers apply. Comments please send to Shi Lin at featherfur@hotmail.com)  
  
The title of this shortfic is Latin for 'rest in peace' - it's a somewhat spazzed take on Tsuzuki's POV in the last bit of the Kyoto arc, when he calls Touda out after wounding Muraki. Eh. Spoilers for Kyoto arc, obviously, and T+H hints.   
  
  
Requiescat In Pace   
a yami no matsuei fanfiction  
-----------------------------  
  
= the harvester is near  
his blade is on your skin  
to plant a new beginning  
well then let the cut begin  
let the cut begin =  
  
--sixpence none the richer, "love"  
  
----  
  
I think I was crying. I'm almost certain I did.   
  
Burn, I told Touda, burn. Scorch away my wounds in this blazing inferno. Sear me with your midnight flames until my body, this wreck of an empty shell, fades away as ashes into oblivion. Devour my soul in dark heat, and crucify it in hell's never-ending fire.   
  
Suzaku-neesan and the other shiki would have been concerned about preserving my life. But they wouldn't have understood that I don't want to be rescued anymore.   
  
Let this eternal curse finally slumber.   
  
I shouldn't belong here. I don't belong here. I can't belong here. I've caused too many people too much pain just by existing. I don't hope for forgiveness, but at least...if I'm gone, maybe it'll be better...  
  
I know it doesn't pay to hope.  
  
Hellspawn, they call me. Monster. So. Let the descendant of the dark return to where he came from.  
  
Take everything, and burn it into nought.   
  
Burn.  
  
And Touda - faithful, loyal Touda - burned.  
  
----   
  
My head snaps up.  
  
You're here.   
  
You're calling me.   
  
You're screaming at me, telling me to go over to you, and when that doesn't work you want to come over to me. Don't. Don't, I try to tell you. Call me an idiot; scream at me all you want, but never cross that line. I'm not sure either of us could take it.   
  
Why does it have to be you of all people? I avoid looking at you, because the hurt and regret will only intensify. You shouldn't have come. I don't deserve your concern - all I know is that I want to stop everything, to stop pretending, stop trying to push away the past, stop living with what I am and what I do. The guilt, like a thousand-tonne of bricks laid on the crumbling foundation of my sanity, is too heavy to bear. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's not enough and it never will be, but I'm sorry.   
  
Yes, call me an idiot. I don't think I ever told you I was a coward, too.  
But I'm tired.  
I'm so tired.  
  
You need someone better by your side.  
  
For a heartbeat, silence. And before I fully grasp what's happening, your feet are off the ledge and you're in space, the image of your body blurred as it plunges through air wavering in a heat-haze. My mind freezes. It's everything I can do to open my arms to catch you as you crash into me, a blast of warmth and light and solid weight that presses against my numb flesh, embracing it in thin arms. So surreal, all of this - why are you here? Why did you come? How does it all hinge together into Tsuzuki Asato's suicide?  
  
There is a part of me that still clings to fragile things like love and forgiveness and trust, refusing to let go because they are so very precious and so very rare, and even though they are so very short-lived it's impossible to give them up entirely once you've known their taste, no matter how bleak the circumstances. That part is looking at you now, feeding on the desperation, the absolute clarity of the *acceptance* blazing in your eyes. And it shakes me to the core because I realise there is nothing I want more than to take it, this shining lifeline thrown to a drowning soul.  
  
It doesn't pay to hope. But with you...perhaps...   
  
I'm not going back, you insist. I don't want to be alone again.  
My home is by your side, you say. Don't leave. Don't let go.  
  
Something cracks inside me, and I reach forward to grasp salvation.  
  
----  
  
We're holding each other. Your body is shivering, wracked with pent-up emotion. I can hear myself sobbing, but the hot tears dripping down my face are tears of catharsis, of strangled misery finally being released to breathe. Of tightly spiralled pain untwisting itself from the tangled depths of my heart.   
  
I'm sorry I didn't trust you.   
I'm sorry I couldn't believe that people care for me.   
I'm sorry I forgot I wasn't alone anymore.  
  
The relief that floods me is like a vast blanket of white, so blinding in both radiance and purity it leaves me unable to speak. It's strange, isn't it, that even at a time like this that small part of my mind is thinking that you feel *good* in my arms, as if they had been made to fit around you somehow. Your head is buried in my chest; it's odd how I'm dimly aware of stroking your hair, feeling it slide softly through my fingers like threads of sweat-soaked silk. Somehow the sensations coalesce into a cloak of peace that slides round me, even through the crackling of Touda's flames and screech of collapsing scaffolding. Strange, isn't it, that even as the heat builds and I feel my consciousness starting to give way, I think it's not so bad dying, as long as I'm holding you here with me.   
  
...Perhaps most of all, I'm tired of being unselfish.   
  
Stay with me, please?   
  
The black fire roars, and I feel you nod as the world fades from sight.  
  
And I smile.   
  
-- owari -- 


End file.
